Archives for: June 2014

Tonight starts the Jewish holiday of Shavous, which commemorates the time when G-d spoke to the Jewish People at Mount Sinai and gave us the Torah. This is when the Jewish people were first commanded to keep kosher, and dairy foods were quicker to prepare than meat in those days. So, it’s become a custom to eat dairy foods for this holiday.

Cheesecake is a common Shavous food, and in the past we’ve baked it in such huge quantities that one of my kids dubbed it “the cheesecake holiday.” In the past, I’ve experimented with making healthier cheesecakes for myself. I’d use goat cheese and agave instead of cream cheese and white sugar. The end result is usually that I end up over-eating “my special cheesecake” because nobody else really wants it when there’s “traditional cheesecake” available. And I don’t do all THAT well on goat cheese or too many sugars anyway- even sugar from compliant sources such as agave. Plus, these ingredients are much more expensive than the traditional ingredients, and normally I consume these special foods in much smaller quantities.

So, this year we’re trying something different. We baked two large cheesecakes; one plain and one chocolate. Both are made with real cream cheese, sour cream, and white sugar. The chocolate one also has a small amount of cow’s milk added. Both are also made with rice flour rather than spelt flour, so they’re basically safe for me. Not 100% compliant, but free from my worst avoids. I’m hoping that I’m better able to “have a taste of each one and then stop” since they’re not baked special for me. I suspect that I’ll react as well to a tiny amount of cow’s milk as I will to a larger amount of goat cheese.

We also got the first CSA box of the year today! I just ate a salad of locally grown, organic greens. I plan to have a lot more salads over the next few days.